4 ms·

What's the difference between space-based directed energy transmission and building-vaporizing laser space weapons?

• Vendan 10y ago
  Nothing!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
• VLM 10y ago
  "solar level" power density, even ten times solar level power density, is still maybe a factor of a million too low to vaporize buildings. Note that a 2x solar energy flux beam would still be an interesting tactical or strategic weapon. It wouldn't melt or burn anything directly but you could make winter streets very comfortable for protestors, or make summer streets intolerably hot for protestors. Or you could boil off water quicker than letting the sun do it itself, which is nice after a snow storm and not so nice during a drought. There are a variety of interesting optical resolution limits such that its physically impossible to accidentally turn a "warms up a couple square miles" mirror into a death ray of doom. Note that like 50 years ago people were pimping 90+% effective microwave antennas... the ground station work was done decades ago and its cheap. Now how you get a multi-megawatt continuous microwave magnetron in orbit and powered is the hard part.
  • jp555 10y ago
    super interesting thx! I didn't think of larger-area, lower intensity beam as an option. Now it's got me thinking of other ideas like adding a few months of growing season to northern & southern farms, which sounds like a cover story of Popular Science magazine from the 70s :D